We recently stripped VCT at a saw mill. Stripping the floors left a lot of dirty puddles. We sucked those up with a wet vac and then came back and scrubbed the dirty areas. Some cleaned up and some did not. We then put down water, sucked it up and continued with the process.
We did all we knew to get rid of what appears to be dirt on the floor. We then finished the tile.
The manager called today and wanted to discuss the way the floors looked with what appears to be dirt under the finish. He claims this should not happen, but as I said, we did everything we knew to clean the floors after stripping.
Is there a way to deal with this and have a completely clean floor? The floors have many areas on them and get a good bit of traffic.

Hard & Resilient Floor Care - Tom Tompkins

Answer

Assuming there was no dried slurry remaining on the floor, your description would indicate the presence of un-removed finish. Unfortunately, the floor will need to be re-stripped to correct this. This time mix the stripper as strong as the label suggests, allow 15 minutes contact time and use a build-up removal pad. You may need to repeat this 2-3 times. The way to check for satisfactory results after the wet vacuum slurry pick-up is to apply a heavy rinse (by lightly pressing out the wet mop). Once the floor is covered with a heavy, uniform coat of water, carefully inspect the results. The floor appearance with a heavy rinse coat will approximate the appearance after applying about 4 coats of floor finish. By looking down into the floor and picking up light reflections, do any uneven ridges protrude above the floor? Is there any hint of discoloration? If the floor is not close to perfect, repeat the strip operation. Gary Clipperton National Pro Clean Corp.(719) 598-5112 www.nationalproclean.com